only bring them to the
point where we have stood from the day of the Declaration of
Independence--to the point where Lafayette would have brought
them, and to which he looked as a consummation devoutly to be
wished.

Then, too, and then only, will be the time when the character of
Lafayette will be appreciated at its true value throughout the
civilized world. When the principle of hereditary dominion shall be
extinguished in all the institutions of France; when government
shall no longer be considered as property transmissible from sire to
son, but as a trust committed for a limited time, and then to return
to the people whence it came; as a burdensome duty to be discharged,
and not as a reward to be abused; when a claim, any claim, to
political power by inheritance shall, in the estimation of the whole
French people, be held as it now is by the whole people of the North
American Union--then will be the time for contemplating the
character of Lafayette, not merely in the events of his life, but in
the full development of his intellectual conceptions, of his fervent
aspirations, of the labors and perils and sacrifices of his long and
eventful career upon earth; and thenceforward, till the hour when
the trump of the Archangel shall sound to announce that Time shall
be no more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the
annals of our race, high on the list of the pure and disinterested
benefactors of mankind.

THE JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION (Delivered at New York, April 30th, 1839)

Fellow-Citizens and Brethren, Associates of the New York Historical
Society:--

Would it be an unlicensed trespass of the imagination to conceive
that on the night preceding the day of which you now commemorate the
fiftieth anniversary--on the night preceding that thirtieth of
April, 1789, when from the balcony of your city hall the chancellor
of the State of New York administered to George Washington the
solemn oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the
United States, and to the best of his ability to preserve, protect,
and defend the Constitution of the United States--that in the
visions of the night the guardian angel of the Father of our country
had appeared before him, in the venerated form of his mother, and,
to cheer and encourage him in the performance of the momentous and
solemn duties that he was about to assume, had delivered to him a
suit of celestial armor--a helmet, consisting of the principles of